Shades of Green Sadie Beaton

What will Mi'kma'ki look and feel like when environmental justice is achieved?

Over the last couple of years, we've asked this question to dozens of people working on the front lines of these movements. Because it turns out that environmental justice is not just about dismantling systems of oppression like colonial and white supremacy. It definitely IS about those things, but it's also about imagining and shaping futures where we can all safely live, work and play together on these unceded lands, humans and non-humans alike.

For some it was a daunting questions. After all, environmental justice can only happen when we've healed from all of the other kinds of injustice too. As Indigenous Climate Justice activist and member of Chipewan First Nation Eriel Deranger describes, "It’s not just about the environmental movement.  Decolonization only works if it’s across the board.  Through economics, through commerce, through trade, through the development of those resources.  For me, decolonization is a restoration of balance in our relationship with mother earth, and it would change everything."

Others really relished in sharing their visions of a just future. Mi'kmaq rights holder and activist Barbara Low's vision was on the tip of her tongue.  “This has always been Mi’kma’ki and it will be fully Mi’kma’ki again and that means all of our unceded territories. This whole colonial project is just going to be a drop in the bucket of our whole time."

In today's episode we'll be exploring how tools and frameworks from reparations and reconciliation to decolonization and afrofuturism can help us to envision and shape futures where we don't have to fight for environmental justice any longer. African American writer and cultural geographer Carolyn Finney compels us to imagine  how we will attend to the relationships at the centre of these visions, too: "What if  everything from legislation to the way we structure our institutions, our curriculums, and our behaviour, came from that premise that justice is love made public? That’s a state of mind I want to be living in, where we don’t necessarily have to call things out like environmental justice or social justice anymore, because we are always tending to it in a full, rich, and complex way, as part the fabric of who we are."
We all have roles to play in imagining and shaping just futures on these lands.  For many of us, it begins with learning to listen. And as we've heard throughout this podcast series, many of us need to be willing to let go and allow environmental justice movements to change everything.  In Mi'kma'ki, it turns out that our ancestors made treaties that lay out a relationship framework that can help show us the way. As Mi'kmaq rights holder, artist and metal fabricator Tayla Paul describes, all of these concepts are within reaching distance. "It’s come to the point where we have to retire the old way of doing things. And I think it’s not just indigenous people that understand that. We already get it on a grassroots level. On a friendship level. We know what friendship, and sharing and peace are." 

Featured Voices:

Dr. Wanda Thomas Bernard
Eriel Deranger
Dr. Carolyn Finney
Shaya Ishaq
El Jones
Lynn Jones
Barbara Low   
Catherine Martin
Rebecca Moore
Michelle Paul
Tayla Paul
Dr. Ingrid Waldron
Quotes have been condensed here for clarity and brevity. Huge thanks to every one of the ears and voices that made this episode and this five episode series possible. 

Our theme was composed by the incredible Nick Durado. We are also grateful to N'we Jinan Artists and youth from Asiniw-Kisik Education Complex in Kawacatoose First Nation, Saskatchewan for allowing us to excerpt the amazing song, Many Paths.

This project has been supported by Ecology Action Centre and the Community Conservation Research Network

When it comes to environmental justice, are environmental organizations listening? Are we willing to change in the ways that we are being asked?

Environmental justice movements define our environment more broadly than the mainstream environmental movement, recognizing the interconnectedness of the social and ecological crises we are facing. Centring the voices of Black, Indigenous and people of colour, environmental justice works to resist and reshape the ways that race, space and power intersect. These grassroots advocates have also repeatedly called on mainstream environmental organizations to address environmental racism, elitism in the movement, and lack of diverse representation on their staffs and boards.

As questions around diversity, decolonization, and justice begin to gain more traction in mainstream social movements, environmental organizations are beginning to respond. But the path is messy and uncertain. As Ecology Action Centre‘s Joanna Bull describes: “We don’t actually even see what were being asked to do yet, I don’t think. We being the environmental movement. I don’t think we fully understand what is seen as problematic about the way we are now. And I think a lot of those things that are problematic are really deeply entrenched with the structure of how we exist.”

In this episode we’re going to explore some of the ways that the environmental movement has responded to the challenges presented by environmental justice, including some stories of Ecology Action Centre’s own journey here in unceded Mi’kmaq territory. We’ll be asking some uncomfortable questions as part of this work to explore our complicity with the oppressive systems we are fighting. We’ll be practicing listening to environmental perspectives from outside of our bubble. And we’ll be wondering about our own roles and responsibilities when it comes to a just future here in Mi’kma’ki and beyond.

We don’t have any answers, but we want to share the questions we have been asking so far, in the hopes that more of us can begin to share this messy work of shifting from good intentions to good practice. As Dr. Carolyn Finney suggests, these questions are just the beginning: “Maybe what we need to do is to be asking different questions. Maybe what we need to do is to restructure the way we’re in relationship to one another across difference. And that is a lot more work. It might change everything we’re doing.”

We hope you’ll tune into this Shades of Green podcast episode, “Listen Up: On Building Relationships Across Difference in the Environmental Movement.” Stay curious with us as we dig into some juicy questions that challenge us to step up to the work of building a just future together.

Featured Voices:

Joanna Bull
Eriel Deranger
Dr. Carolyn Finney
Barbara Low
Randolph Haluza-Delay
Lynn Jones
Stephen Thomas
Dr. Ingrid Waldron

Quotes have been condensed here for clarity and brevity. Huge thanks to every one of the ears and voices that made this episode possible. Further thanks to Joanna Brenchley, Erica Butler, Cintia Gillam, Jen Graham and Peter Lane.

Our theme was composed by the incredible Nick Durado. We are also grateful for permission from Ansley Simpson to excerpt from her lovely song A Mixture of Frailties.

This project has been supported by Ecology Action Centre and the Community Conservation Research Network

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Further Reading: https://shadesofgreenweb.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/listen-up-building-relationships-across-difference-in-the-environmental-movement/